The Isolation and Identification of the Anti-Black Tongue Factor

The history of pellagra

“…They conducted further studies in which they administered nicotinic acid to sick animals. The result was a quick and complete regression of disease symptoms [36].…”

“…In 1937, Dr. Conrad Arnold Elvehjem and his colleagues in a short letter to the editors of the "Journal of the American Chemical Society" described that the cause of the formation of "black tongue" was a deficiency of nicotinic acid [36]. They conducted further studies in which they administered nicotinic acid to sick animals.…”

Evolution of NAD Biosynthetic Enzymes

“…For those who believed and ultimately demonstrated that glycolysis is a function of subcellular components, enzyme meant something in yeast that could also be taken "out of yeast" or "from yeast." To emphasize the distinct physical nature of enzymes, Buchner, Harden, and their contemporaries began using the term "zymase," meaning an enzyme fraction from yeast or another cellular source (Barnett, 2003) hjem identified nicotinic acid and nicotinamide as two vitamin precursors of NAD (Elvehjem et al, 1938). Subsequently, the enzymologists Jack Preiss and Philip Handler identified the three enzymes and two stable metabolic intermediates required to synthesize NAD from nicotinic acid (Preiss and Handler, 1958).…”

“…Apart from the sequence and structural data used to argue that quinolinic acid PRTase was the predecessor of the two other NAD biosynthetic enzymes (Chappie et al, 2005), what we know about metabolism makes this a strong expectation. Because we know of no abiotic source or de novo pathway for nicotinic acid or nicotinamide (Elvehjem et al, 1938), or nicotinamide riboside (Bieganowski and Brenner, 2004), we would expect that ancestral cells made NAD de novo and we would expect a selection for salvage enzymes occurred only after specific or nonspecific NAD degradative pathways generated salvageable products. But the logic of a quinolinic acid PRTase gene as the ancestor of nicotinic acid and nicotinamide PRTase genes becomes troubling when one considers that de novo pathways in most familiar organisms contain oxygendependent steps.…”

A Method to Monitor the NAD+ Metabolome—From Mechanistic to Clinical Applications

“…The salvage pathway plays a more prominent role in synthesizing NAD + in mammalians since it predominates in most cell types [2]. The precursors nicotinamide (Nam) and nicotinic acid (or niacin, NA) were proposed by Elvehjem [10] and Preiss and Handler [11], establishing two routes, an aminated and a non-aminated one, towards the synthesis of NAD + . In the 2000s, nicotinamide riboside (NR) [12] was proposed as an efficient NAD + precursor with nicotinamide riboside kinase (NRK) as a rate-limiting step in producing nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) in the salvage pathway and eventually resulting in production of NAD + .…”